58 Percent of Tech Workers Feel Like Impostors

Do you feel like you don’t deserve your job despite all the accomplishments you’ve achieved in the workplace? Maybe you even worry that your co-workers will discover that you’re a fraud. These feelings are known as impostor syndrome.

According to a 2011 research published in the International Journal of Behavioral Science, an estimated 70 percent of people experience impostor syndrome at one point in their lives. The syndrome affects all people, including women, men, finance executives, marketing managers, and physicians. Even software engineers and product managers sometimes feel undeserving of their roles.

On Blind, an anonymous Salesforce employee expressed feeling like a fraud even after 14 years of being an engineer. Another anonymous user wrote about experiencing impostor syndrome after joining an elite tech company.

To get a glimpse of how prevalent impostor syndrome is among tech workers, we presented another survey to the thousands of tech professionals using the Blind app.

Survey: Do you suffer from impostor syndrome? (A) Yes (B) No

Total Participants: 10,402

Survey Dates: August 27, 2018 – September 5, 2018

The Results

What we learned from our survey is that over half (57.55 percent) of our total participants are experiencing impostor syndrome. Individual company results show roughly the same outcome.

Among the 17 companies that tallied up with the most survey responses, Expedia claims the number one spot for most employees suffering from impostor syndrome (72.88 percent), followed by Salesforce (66.88 percent), then Amazon (64.48 percent). Apple claims last place with 45.45 percent. Apple is only one of three companies that have less than 50 percent of employees experiencing impostor syndrome, the other two being Cisco (46.67 percent) and eBay (49.69 percent).

What do you think of the latest survey results? Comment below or send us a tweet!

1 thought on “58 Percent of Tech Workers Feel Like Impostors”

Nice post. I did have a question though that I was hoping you could answer. Are there any effective techniques for overcoming imposter syndrome? I talked to my doctor and she mentioned it to me. I appreciate any advice you could give me.